Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA
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J Am Med Inform Assoc · Nov 2018
Evaluating the impact of expanding the number of diagnosis codes reported in inpatient discharge databases on the counts and rates of birth defects.
Public health surveillance programs worldwide implement a variety of case-finding strategies, and many rely at least in part on International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-based diagnostic codes in administrative and clinical databases. Over time, state- and national-level hospital discharge databases have been expanding the number of reported diagnosis code fields. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of these expansions on frequencies and rates of major birth defects, and the classification of birth defects as isolated vs multiple. ⋯ Our findings encourage additional research for other health outcomes in patients of all ages. Other disease registries rely at least in part on diagnostic codes documented by healthcare providers in their case-finding activities, irrespective of ascertainment protocols, making routine investigation of these databases essential.